


Scarlet rising

by Kes



Series: Thor 2 Rewritten: The Shaded Tree [7]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Other, Thor: The Dark World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-14 03:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2176308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kes/pseuds/Kes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the Convergence approaches, the dark elves prepare for war, the first flight of the blades in five thousand years. But there is no union among them, and despite the creation of a deadly power deep uncertainty about the cause remains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Five thousand years of wind and drifting sand has changed the landscape on Svartalfheim, but it has not buried the battleground. It could not. The broken skeletons of the greatships rise too high for the sandy winds to touch; their casing is not vulnerable to the sand. In the shelter of one of them, Alflyse’s _darhyada_ are gathered in a circle, and she and her soldiers stand guard. If one of the Darkstar’s inner circle comes by, they must be tearing away at it, trying to salvage any usable weapons or other technology.

It is hard not to see the shadows of the battle still, as the alarms sounded and ship after ship came plunging from the sky. Twisted at the base of this ship, she can see the remnants of an Asgardian fire cannon; this one at least had hit its target. Targeting the cannons with a blade or a gun had not worked; a flickering tongue of blue light would shoot down, retrieve and reposition it. The only way, so the Darkstar said, had been to block the cannon’s escape route and squash it with the ship. At crash stations, most of those aboard should have survived – as opposed to those in the conflagrations that resulted from a direct hit from a cannon – and perhaps they had survived the impact.

She herself had stumbled into Darkstar clutching the hand of a child she didn’t know but whose death shortly after had nearly destroyed her, one of the last people taken aboard. Darkstar, Satellite, and Sunquench had tried for the escape, and only Darkstar had made it. When they returned, the battlefield was dark and quiet. The surviving soldiers had moved to begin evacuating survivors, but they had found only corpses, their breathing tubes ripped from them.

One finger at a time, Alflyse loosens her grip on her gun.

Behind her, a man she thinks is called Kilru says, clearly audible, “Time is running out and all we have any sort of consensus on is that we’re scared and tired! At the very least we must decide whether we have the right to do this.”

The voices go quiet again, and she pokes her head around the side. No-one. From what a couple of the soldiers from _shorua_ blade told her earlier, several of these discussions are going on around the field. As far as she is concerned, the reasons are sound. Various rear-guard actions on this field years before, the _hethryada_ taking the brunt of the crashes that had left _darhyada_ alive and running for the other ships, had left the survivors with a majority of ordinary people and not enough soldiers left to keep order. Besides, it isn’t meant to be their job. The _darhyada_ govern themselves, even in the light – until the Darkstar suspended the orbitals, once this verse’s longevity was discovered.

“Blade commander!” someone calls, and it takes a second for it to sink in that they mean her. Heart hammering, she motions Meleron to cover her field of view. “What excuse does the Darkstar have, to keep the orbitals suspended, when the orbitals themselves appointed him as the verse bloomed?” Mithe asks.

“I don’t know. I assume he meant it to last until we returned to darkness.”

Ey makes a face. “Thank you for that eloquent defence of the virtues of the hethryada.”

“Now be fair,” Rilkathe, a young woman with her hair done like a trainee for the advisory orbital, says. “It’s clear our blade commander doesn’t hold with it, or she wouldn’t be keeping watch for us. If the Darkstar finds out, she’ll lose her braid.”

Alflyse takes her mask off, as though an orbital has already formed here. ““So would a lot of others, and if he takes all of them he won’t have a hethryada,” she answers, with more confidence than she feels. “Besides, I can’t stop you, and I believe that my oath to protect you in the light is best fulfilled by letting you govern yourselves.”

“So it has always been done, I remember it in the way it fits in my mind. The Darkstar and darhyada work together to wield the hethryada as protection.” Hadnyse should know; she had taken a terrible wound in the leg in a verse long past, and had had to leave the hethryada for the engineers.

Kilru shakes his head. “It’s not about the protection. I mean no affront to you, blade commander, but your folk are proving unable to manage the basics of sustaining a population; nothing may be done without you, but your folk are never there, always busy. So the waste is processed slow, the food badly distributed, the space disorganised and justice often left undone.” Hearing it hurts, even though he’s right.

“I have tried,” she says, pauses, and continues, “but it is not enough. I agree.”

“It will be worse when he sends you to war.”

“We _can’t_ go back to war!” Ergrin says, slightly too loud, and Mithe hushes em. “We’ll all be killed for real this time.”

Orekim turns to spit rage at em, and Alflyse finds herself out of the argument again – but then, it is not hers to have. She turns to check that her soldiers are not frantically gesturing at her, and starts to move away. “What do you think of the Darkstar’s plans?” Rilkathe says, having moved around the circle, unnoticed in the conflict. Her gaze is cautious, guarded.

 _Spy?_ But if she is, all is already lost. Alflyse takes a deep breath. “I think they are dangerous – but then so would repeating the old plan be – and I dread the consequences. But I remember what the advisory orbital said before we recovered the Aether. I don’t know.”

“The children of this verse are strong. This field is the proof of that. I wish that we had never tried to return, that we had simply used the Aether to power the ships for all the eternities we would need – and so I would have advised, had I been in a position to be heard. But his advisory orbital did not see the threat as considerable, and he consulted none but those who agreed with him.” Rilkathe rubs her mouth with a hand that shakes slightly.

“Can the Aether do that?”

“Yes – the power they run on comes from it originally. I even know how to connect it – but he has lost it.”

Someone calls Rilkathe from the main group, and she leaves Alflyse to resume the long watch.

Eventually, they do form an orbital that day, though the last round of discussions is held while frantically digging. Three of eight _dahar_ luminaries are chosen – Kilru, Mithe, Rilkathe – and tasked with finding the other orbitals. As they return to the ship with their finds, Alflyse makes sure to mix her people with the others, to give them plenty of chance.

Before she has time to wonder what the red pigment on several soldiers’ armour is, Mithe touches her shoulder. “Soldiers marked red are friendly.”

“Isn’t it too conspicuous?”

Ey winks. “Not unless it gets out. All the more incentive for it not to. You have a mark, by the way.”

Perhaps it’s fair for them not to trust the _hethryada_ ; it is, after all, their failure marked out on this field. The wind has worked sand into the joints of her mask, and the sun gets in her eyes. Even hidden behind Svartalfheim’s faithful shield planet, it still hurts.


	2. Chapter 2

Having deposited the fruits of their labour, the few darkling survivors filter in below him as he readies the holofield to answer Malekith’s call. Behind him, the Darkstar is talking softly to Irithan; there will be precious little opportunity to talk once the plan is in motion, and Irithan will be the heir of it once all sacrifices are made. “Is he ready?” Algrim asks Malekith as he joins him and says the last few words over his knife.

“He will be, when the time comes for him to take my place.”

“You have made of him a good leader for light and dark.” They have been fragmented for too long.

“Are you ready?” Malekith _aihuate_ asks him, and Algrim swallows. He feels as though he is already burning, but there is no regret.

“Is it time?”

“It is time when you are ready, nihote,” he replies, and places a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It is a great service you do, and a great sacrifice you make.”

“No greater than yours to come, when you take the Aether into yourself, or those already made below.” It is best to do it rather than to wait and break himself with fear. He calls the assembled people to attention, and the Darkstar begins to speak with the holofields moving under his hands. The Aether, currently in an unknown host in Asgard, must be recovered before the Convergence, before their revenge can take full form and they can return home. Algrim waits, terror burning across his bones, and thinks about the day their people will be safe, when this is over.

“In a flicker, Asgard will take prisoners from another world. Among them will be a darkling, carrying doom into the heart of their strength; there is yet one more firestone on this ship. Hail Algrim! Who will take the curse of our people and poison our enemies with it, accept his own destruction to destroy them. Witness, my people, the last of the Cursed.” In one hand, he takes the knife, and with the other beckons. Algrim joins him on the very edge of the platform, wondering whether the curse of the firestones is first and foremost the dread of them.

“To the fire I give myself, its source, its kindling. To you I do offer myself, Lord Malekith, sacrifice to the life of our people.” The words have been the same at each preparation ceremony.

“You will be the fire that burns our enemies in their hearts,” Malekith responds, and adds, quieter, “nihote a si, nihote. Burn you shall, give breath to the fire, give blood to the fire, give bone to the fire. Algrim, nihote, Darkstar Satellite, by this wound do I curse you to kindling, you my sacrifice of light to darkness, your strength mine, your heart mine.”

_My heart, my cause, has always been yours, Malekith, aihuate._

The prepared blade cuts through his armour as easily as his flesh, and he stiffens, pain throbbing through his torso, clutching Malekith _aihuate_ to stay upright and on the platform. Black blood floods down the white armour, soaking his fingers, and he almost screams when Malekith tucks the firestone into the wound. For a brief moment, his ears roar and he has to shut his eyes, but as it gets a taste for his blood it settles, and numbness spreads through his body, drowning the pain.

“Fire-sword of our people is he, Algrim, who is cursed to never again know darkness. Hail Algrim!”

As the rumblings of the answer – sparser than it should have been, he notices, though he would never have been able to tell that before – begin, he straightens up. Four soldiers arrive with the last remaining Cursed armour, its shapes and forms so old that it strikes a chord of terror and hope into even his dulled heart. He takes the helmet from Irithan and puts it on himself, and one by one, the soldiers on the platform take their masks off. Below, the rest of the hethryada follows suit.

The noise dies down, and Malekith gives his orders. _Anduyon_ blade darkstar to launch and take him to Asgard’s latest killing grounds in time for the prisoner transfer, and the greatship to Asgard to wait for his signal. Maximum damage, maximum carnage, maximum slaughter, so the orders go when they arrive. Revenge.

“You must take down their defences, whatever they are, so that I can come to the Aether. It is in the palace complex, so I will need to be there.”

“I will clear your path,” Algrim replies.

“It will not be in vain, nihote.”

“I know.”


	3. Chapter 3

While the greatship weaves its way through the verse, the darklings sleep, but the _hethryada_ wake early to prepare, to make braidcount and armour check, to receive orders and clarify formation. It is a few moments of blessed calm before Alflyse finds herself swept up in the storm of safeguarding the _darhyada_ , which rages with a fierceness that makes her thankful for the existence of the orbitals. At least now she is dealing with a semi-organised group, with luminaries.

It seems to take forever, but at last they have been assigned crash stations and safety watches, and her soldiers start to go on ahead to the blade. “So, the Darkstar calls and you answer, for all your deference to the orbitals,” Rilkathe says, knuckles white on the rail. “This is not a call he should have made alone.”

Alflyse looks down. “I must. We need the Aether, you said it yourself.”

“Tell me, blade commander, do you hate the Asgardians as he does?”

When Darkstar ship had returned to the battlefield, she had been sent to Triblade. Her own system had been among those she had found among the carnage, pulled out, and brought hour after aching hour to the interrence unit. Few who were not soldiers had seen the way the halls of the greatships had looked, the way their people had died. She remembers the start of the battle, a brief glimpse of a flying red cape on a man barking orders and shooting fire from his spear, identified swiftly by the fleet as the luminor. She remembers seizing an Asgardian by the horned helmet and jamming her bayonet into his throat, watching him die. She remembers the sick shock she felt, afterwards. What would they have looked like, out of their metal shells? _I will find out, I suppose._ A battle was one thing, though. This… “I don’t know. They must have darhyada, of sorts. I hate their luminor.”

“And they are children of this verse, and so the luminor and their hethryada may be dust, and who knows the state of their orbitals? I too am troubled, not least because we are less able to withstand their wrath than we were.”

Ergrin, next to her, shakes eir head. “It’s a good way to kill us all,” ey says, voice wobbling.

The final signal flashes along the walkway, and she ducks away from the conversation, heart pounding. This will be her first fight in her own blade, and she scurries along the passageway rather than take the coursing. The rest of her crew, as she catches them up one by one, are similarly silent; only Egremal, _feande_ blade satellite, seems to feel like talking.

Inside the blade, the navigational systems are already up, and a weapons check is in progress. “All loaded and ready, satellite,” Termanu says. A succession of voices in the background confirm readiness of this or that system to Egremal, while she walks to the central command position and fiddles with the controls.

“Feande blade ready, commander, though there’s a problem with the two-way communications,” Egremal says at last, and she takes a deep breath. _First command._

“I know, because I put it there. Listen to me; we do not target their darhyada. I don’t know what they look like, but we all remember their soldiers – if they aren’t a soldier and have no weapon, we assume darhyada. The point is to retrieve the Aether, and our job is just to stop their hethryada getting in our way.”

“But the Darkstar –”

“I know what he said. I’ve heard otherwise from the orbitals, which he didn’t consult.” More softly, she adds, “We all feel the same pain. I know. But slaughter will not ease it.”


End file.
